Quarantine: The Best Time To Make Career Moves

Wherever you may be, we can all relate to the quarantine lifestyle that 2020 has forced us to adapt in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While work days are bereft of commute, our main concern now is making sure our mic is muted and we look presentable witwebcam. Unfortunately, there are those who have lost their jobs as a ramification of coronavirus. Employed or not, it is a time we are meditating and reflecting on where we stand in the dynamic workforce. These are uncertain times, but it's certain we can take advantage of working from home and quarantine to boost our professional profile.

Enroll in online courses
Major companies are empathetic and adapted their products and services to best serve our needs in enhancing our skill sets. IBM is offering at least 100 free courses. Tableau eLearning is free for anyone for 90 days. Oracle is offering at least 50 hours of free cloud and database training. SAS is offering free e-learning resources with courses in programming and statistics. If one has excessive free time or has finished work early, these courses are valuable and quick to access at anytime.

Get Certified
Like online courses, certifications are discounted or bundled with e-learning courses; some that used to be exclusively taken in-person are now remote. Certifications demonstrate one's knowledge, skills, and commitment to their profession. It will certainly help with job advancement and give you an edge of competence among other candidates. Oracle is offering free certification exams under its cloud and database category. (The exam initially cost $245.) Microsoft Azure is offering free training and a free certification exam voucher. Tableau is offering their Desktop Specialist Certification at half its original exam price.

Polish your resume
Aside from adding new skills you may have earned, freshening up your resume by adding key action verbs, getting rid of redundant bullet points, changing its format, or rephrasing your job duties in your experience section can be beneficial with recruiters reading it at a glance. Perhaps you've decided to change professions and you'd like to tweak your professional summary. Some may have to sweep cobwebs off their resume from the last time they edited it. Some are proactive in keeping their resume current. It helps to meditate on your career goals, read over your resume, and determine if the resume content will help you with where you want to go.

All in all, we have more time to ourselves than ever this year. Thankfully, we can utilize this time to our advantage in self-improvement and learning new skills we may not have had time for initially. Typically, online courses and certification exams can cost a pretty penny, so take this opportunity to embrace the free resources offered by vendors and tech companies. Employers will see that you were avid and proactive during this time, hence why quarantine is the best time for career moves.

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.